641.815 Lewis: Baked: New Frontiers in Baking

A library is a busy, bustling, lively place. The Avon Library is particularly known for its friendly, energetic, helpful staff. This is in part due to the wonderful individuals we've hired over the years, but it's also helped a bit by the fact that we don't open our doors to the public until 10 am. This gives most of the staff plenty of time to get the lights turned on, the computers and printers humming, and their brains powered up for the long day. And yes, this process does require a whole hour.

We do, however, hold bi-monthly staff meetings at 9am, when the library is still closed and quiet and we can all gather and hash it out. But we're not always at our friendly, helpful best at that hour, and the meetings must come supplied with copious amounts of coffee. And treats. So, for our most recent staff meeting, I offered to bake.

It's a simple enough promise when it's made, but in execution, I briefly regretted it. Not that I find baking stressful; quite the contrary - I love it. I love making my own pastry, from keeping the butter cold to rolling out the dough, I love working with temperamental puff pastry and phyllo dough, I love cutting out fluffy biscuits, and peeling pound after pound of apples. (Okay, okay - I actually hate peeling apples. Give me a break, I'm not Betty Freakin' Crocker.)

For me, the hard part is choosing a recipe. I take special care to consider my audience. Does anyone have a nut allergy? Is this a cupcake crowd or a muffin crowd? Should I make individual portions or I can trust everyone to share equitably? Does anyone have an irrational fear of coconut? It's a onerous process. The Avon Library's cookbook collection is no help. We have countless amazing baking cookbooks to choose from. So without even looking inside, I picked one that was smaller, newer, with an amazing cover photo, and hoped for the best.

The cookbook, Baked: New Frontiers in Baking, by Matt Lewis and Renato Poliafito, is incredible. It's based on the Brooklyn bakery of the same name. Their brownie was named the "best" by America's Test Kitchen on the Today Show, and is also known as one of Oprah's "favorite things." I haven't been to the bakery (yet), but the book is filled with unique, mouth-watering recipes. There are a few classics, such as a Marble Bundt Cake, Classic Apple Pie, and Chocolate Chip Cookies. But many of the recipes are along the lines of Banana Espresso Chocolate Chip Muffins, Milk Chocolate Malt Ball Cake, and Pumpkin Whoopie Pies.

The book is organized well, full of gorgeous photos, and provides clear instructions. It also includes a brief story about the beginnings of Baked, and a “field guide to baking,” including info on tools, equipment, terms, and techniques. In addition to chapters on different kinds of desserts, there is one about breakfast and one on drinks. The drinks are wonderfully indulgent after-dinner types, complementing or even standing in for the luscious desserts of the previous chapters: Brown Cow, Chocolate Stout Milkshake, Iced Raspberry Tea Granita.

I thought our little morning pow-wow needed something homey and filling, and just sweet enough to perk us up a bit. The "Sour Cream Coffee Cake (with Chocolate Cinnamon Swirl)" would be perfect.

The cake has three components – the sour cream cake, the chocolate cinnamon swirl, and the crumb topping. I started with the crumb topping. Because it needs to be coarse and crumbly, it calls for butter that’s nice and cold. I cut the butter up into small pieces and put it back in the fridge to keep it firm while I toasted the pecans. Once those were cool, I put the flour, sugar, salt and nuts in my food processor and finely chopped and blended it all up. The cold butter bits went in next, and I just pulsed a few times to break up the butter and get the mixture to a nice “coarse sand” texture. I tasted the crumb topping at this point, and I swear it was so good, that for a second I thought I might just serve it up by itself with some spoons.

But I regained my sanity, and put the bowl of sweet-salty-nutty amazingness in the fridge to keep it cool (and out of my face), and moved on to the chocolate swirl. I first thought this would involve a double boiler, and lots of slow melting, and a big gooey mess, but it’s just some dry ingredients (sugar, cocoa powder, and cinnamon) mixed in a bowl and set aside. Easy!

The cake itself came next. It’s a fairly standard cake process, but with four eggs and a whole 16-ounce container of sour cream included. This is not a low-fat cake, and nor should it be, so if you make it, please don’t use low-fat sour cream. I don’t even know what that stuff is made from.

When that was done, I assembled the cake. It goes like this: cake batter, chocolate cinnamon stuff, cake batter, chocolate cinnamon stuff, cake batter, crumb topping. Sounds easy enough, and if you’re handy with an offset spatula (I am not), it will go swimmingly well (it did not). Spreading the thick batter evenly over the thin layer of dusty cinnamon mixture was tricky. The powder wanted to go where the batter was going. I took my time, practiced some rare patience, and eventually got the batter where it should be, without displacing too much of my swirl. I was pretty darn proud of myself. It wasn’t a total mess, and I didn’t lose my cool. Yay me. The cake bakes for an hour, at the end of which I could care less about how well I had assembled the carefully prepared layers – it smelled so heavenly I just wanted to enjoy it without reflecting on its construction. After it cooled a bit I tasted it – and its flavor surpassed its aroma. It was light and moist, the chocolate cinnamon had melted into a rich ribbon of flavor throughout the center, and the crumb topping was just as delicious as before.

It went very well with our coffee, and with our meeting, and the extra pieces leftover complemented other sluggish moments throughout the workday just as well.